The 1990s: UFOlogy's Golden Age

Once every few years I bring out of storage a small box containing 22 VHS videotapes I started making in the early to middle 1980s of the nascent UFO
documentaries and news reports. Sometimes I taped a whole show or seconds of particular footage. I don't remember much UFO news activity being
reported in the 1970s on TV but in the early 1980s the floodgates opened and now you saw occasional UFO news. However, it wasn't until the 1990s that
television exploded with programs devoted to UFOs plus what they thought was associated phenomena: the paranormal such as the Marfa and other lights
around the world.

In the 1980s people still used emulsion film and not everyone carried still or movie cameras or we would have wound up with a lot more UFO photos and
movies. In the mid- to late-1990s digital cameras became common among consumers and we started to see more UFO photos and now videos shown on TV news.
Cell phones with cameras are now de rigueur but the photos of UFOs and videos haven't changed that much, just more hoaxing.

Even with almost everyone now capable of recording strange aerial phenomena, the reporting has slackened and members here are always complaining about
how the MSM doesn't cover the subject as much as they would like. If you were an adult in the 1980s/1990s and you had an interest in UFOlogy, your
interest was satisfied by all of the programs dedicated to UFOlogy. Here then is a partial list of the programs that were on almost every night or
almost every week, and some of the names associated with the programs. Of course I can't list all of the contents of my videotapes as I might finish
posting this thread next Shavuot!

Jim Dilettoso making the usual fool of himself declaring Phoenix flares didn't have the proper flare signature and "Billy" Meier's "Beamships" not
being models.

Stanton Friedman clashing with Phil Klass (and losing!)

Kevin Randle stating that the "UFO" that crashed at Roswell came from far away and the beings... Such a fool!

Tons of "witnesses" to the Phoenix flares and that they swore they were not flares. A short daylight documentary was made from the same location as
the popular nighttime video that's always shown and the flares are seen disappearing one at a time over different mountain peaks.

A giant and beautiful crop circle being made. A crop circle contest in which all participating teams created identical circles.

James Oberg vs. Don Ecker on Larry King over STS-48

And on, and on, almost the total history of UFOlogy up until approx. 2000. I have another bunch of "newer" tapes. Although nothing new lately, I got
it all!

The photos show my 22 videotapes with contents on stickies and a closeup of one. Plus a TV GUIDE page from Feb. 1994 announcing one of the
documentaries.

BTW, has anyone noticed that all of the comments in the threads as well as private messages all bear the same date: 07/03/2016? The date shown for all
members is that date and it also says that everyone registered on that date! Take a look on the left.

Just recently I was telling another member tales about how back in the day, to get / read about 'conspiracy theory stuff', during the
pre-AOL-invented-the-interenet-era, back then how we used to have to dail-up to local BBS computers (hosted in peoples homes), generally log in one at
a time, and try to download a UFOlogy TXT file or two (UFO stuff was about all the "conspiracy theory" material there was back then), and maybe even
squeeze in a 20kb UFO GIF file, via a 2400baud modem (look that one up kiddies LOL), before our daily limit ran out. Since most such 'servers' only
had one "port" (meaning only one person at a time could dial in) limits were mandatory. Oh, and the "social media" of that era meant you could also go
post some messages for the rest of the visitors on the standalone board kind of thing (imagine one single forum thread, without photo & hyperlink
embeds), during your brief session.

BBS's didn't have the 'cool' "demo music" playing like in that video LOL!

BTW, has anyone noticed that all of the comments in the threads as well as private messages all bear the same date: 07/03/2016? The date shown for all
members is that date and it also says that everyone registered on that date! Take a look on the left.

For me, once we had "all" the "data" flowing freely on the Interwebs, I was able to finally really see the bigger picture for how the world works
(such as facts & perspectives on the military apparatus in light of the rest of the world, Clinton's POLICE STATE (real reason there WERE black
helicopters) kind of stuff). And as I went back on conspiracy theories of old (which seemed to always involve UFO's), with all the new perspectives,
and saw how the UFO stuff was exactly the same old stuff as int he 90's, it became clear to me it was all always just science fiction stuff to keep
"Outside the Box'ers" distracted.

Nice collection..... I think SIGHTINGS was my favorite from the 90's, I used to record every episode, I had a random collection of VHS tapes with all
sorts of UFO stuff too... I think my ex-wife threw those tapes away.

As a Millenial why did the UFO crazed died down? I gotta admit I feel like I'm born in the wrong decade. You guys have the more interesting
stuff.

A few reasons I feel,

Today "faking" a encounter is some much easier than it was in the 90's, if you wanted to fool people and I mean really fool them then you needed
stupidly expensive equipment and expertise. Now with a GoPro and a few tutorials online you can make something that is plausible (I am sure you know
what I mean)..

Hence many current UFO videos that come up are disregarded before they get anywhere near MSM or news outlets..

SADLY people (in general) now just do not care all that much, there is such a different mindset now to what we had in the 90s, in school we spoke
about this stuff for hours, now its all social media bollox and celebrity. People have lost that wonder, I guess someone from the 70's may same the
same about the 80's???...

Indeed the 90's was perfect if you was into UFOlogy but you had to work at getting your information, there was a lot of waiting for newsletters and
VHS orders Please allow 28 days for delivery,

ADDED::: would be a ton of work but maybe start getting them put online Vimeo/Youtube as long as no copyright is infringed???....

The early 90s had a pretty huge new age movement that I learned a lot from, which of course covered a lot of extraterrestrial and ufo phenomena. There
was some crazy things to be found on the internet, from zero-point physics to blueprints for free energy devices. I have tried to find sites like the
ones I used to frequent and they are either hidden or not there anymore. There really was a lot of deep websites to get lost in with some very strange
information.

The wingmakers website is very intriguing, but good luck finding the original site..which is too bad, because the original site had some pretty
interesting info to share. it's ultimately up to the reader though to decide wether it's real or not to them.

Ah, the 1990s...the decade that followed the dreaded Cold War, and highlighted in military by use of "Courier" typeface and typewriters. It was the
peak of many conspiracy related things, before people sat behind a computer screen to talk to other conspirators - and actually talked face to face.
Likewise you actually had to work to get whatever "proof" you thought was credible. Those days are gone. We're more interested in turning absolutely
every possible thing on the face of the earth into a conspiracy. Forget about what is above it.

We're more interested in:
The idea of chemtrails.
The idea of a flat earth.
The idea of all national or international tragedies being false flags.
The idea that everyone isn't actually real.
The idea that the government(s) is(are) interested in the fact that I bought the Final Fantasy XV Collectors Edition on Amazon.

No longer:
The idea that the president is a reptilian.
The idea that Elvis is a manager at the McDonalds in a suburb of Paducah, KY.
The idea that there was an alien running around in a chefs hat in Roswell, NM.
The idea of all lights in the night sky that aren't stars must be aliens.
The idea of all lights in the night sky that aren't stars or aliens must be classified government aircraft.

Yes I think it was a golden age of ufology from a certain perspective. There was suddenly a less reluctant attitude by media companies to debunk
cases. So we suddenly saw TV shows like "Sightings" spring up and even "Unsolved Mysteries" presenting UFO cases alongside murder cases and missing
persons stories. Then of course the X-Files fired imaginations. It also seemed to be the decade when the public trust in politicians and governments
was reaching new lows. So the decade was rife with conspiracy and UFO lore.

However if 1947 is the start of the modern UFO era then I also think 1997 signalled the end of it in some ways. We've probably got more pro-UFO/alien
shows on TV than ever before in 2016. But as those lights blinked out over Phoenix in March 1997 it feels like the age of 'classic' ufology also did.
The Roswell 50th anniversary carried things on for a while. But as the internet went mainstream and we moved into 21st century things changed a
lot.

In 2016 you can examine a lot more information on UFO cases just by using the internet. Back in the 90s obtaining source material was a lot more
difficult. We still don't have the full picture of the jigsaw puzzle but we certainly have a lot more pieces to play with.

Anyway sticking to the nostalgia. I always remember this story from the early 1990s?

It was indeed a hoax. The whole story is on the DVD set The UFO files A.K.A. UFOs under investigation.
John Spencer and Bob Oechsler explain the details and it turns out the disc was a Sikorski helicopter which was cleverly concealed and lit.
They don't name the suspect but the guy narrating (forget the name) goes and knocks on a door somewhere only to receive no answer. Apparently someone
known to those who did the research but who bottled it when scuppered or ????

Dunno if you'll find it on the gooTube but the episode was called UFOs lies and videotape and mentions some other hoaxes which I can't recall at the
moment.
I think the series was Canadian made and ran to thirteen episodes (on disc at least).

I'm not sure it was because public trust of the government was exactly low, it wasn't exactly high during the 1960s and 1970s, and it certainly isn't
very high today. Honestly, we probably share more commonalities on the social scale and relationship with government with the 1960s era.

I think a lot more of it had to do with the fact that there was just enough attainable information out there for people to get their hands on. One of
those things where all of the factors to spur peoples minds was "just right." Look at it like this...

You have these people who were congregating and talking about these ideas that they thought were far out there, but believed they were irrefutably
true. They spent time digging in the mud and getting their physical hands dirty, trying to find whatever scrap of evidence there was to support their
ideas. Then along comes this radically new creation of the minds of some of those same scientists that might have been behind some of these things:
the internet.

The internet gave those people a new medium to search for materials to support their claims. But it also gave them a new outlet for which to spread
whatever knowledge they claimed to have, and connect with others on the other side of the country, continent, and eventually the world. It was new in
the 90s. Eventually though, it wasn't new anymore, and people became more interested in posting selfies, duckfaces, and pictures of the food dish
served to them at the local McDonalds. Those of us old enough to remember when the internet was young have gotten to witness the evolution and
devolution of the internet and thus the topics that it encompassed.

Some of the old conspiracy theories were enough to make your skin crawl. I mean, they were not only believable, but they were also just downright
scary. The ones I hear of post 9/11 however, a lot of them seem like a bunch of paranoid mumble jumble.

I remember I would be on the edge of my seat watching UFO documentaries in the 90s, but after a while the excitement began to die down. Those
documentaries were very engaging and exciting but they never arrived at a satisfactory conclusion in the end. Either no conclusive evidence/proof
would be presented or whatever was shown for 45-60 minutes would end up being labelled a hoax. It's like going to an asian massage parlor and not
getting liquid explosion in the end. Reminds me of that joke, how do you keep a moron in suspense?

A lot of people got rich from milking the UFO cash cow back then and I'm glad for their success, but nowadays I wouldn't be able to sit through an
entire UFO documentary. On the rare occasions that I watch TV now, if I pass by the History Channel and that clown from Ancient Aliens or some other
UFO related BS is on I instantly change the channel.

It's always puzzled me why people only chase after evidence about the "craft" and "bodies" but never looked at the disinformation machines running
within and without ufology circles.

There is an astonishing amount of first hand and suggestive evidence that a series of mythologies were deliberately injected into ufology, that key
researchers were baited by ever more volumous faked documents and some were bribed to undermine and misdirect colleagues. Shockingly, many fell into
line and became part of this mechanism in the hopes of discovering the "truth".

Many people believe these 'control mechanisms' existed to cover up advanced, conventional technologies.

My research has led me to believe that something else was going on.

People like Richard Doty produced books long after the late 90s decline and when no longer in USAF / AFOSI. Why? What conventional technology required
that?

People forget that those actions, both known and suspected required mundane work orders. Budget requests, fund allocations, time sheets, performance
meetings, assessments. Inter agency cooperation.

What for? I don't know. I don't think it was 'aliens' or time travellers, but nor do I think it was solely to cover the B2 Spirit or the
Eurofighter.

Why? Well, it's still going on, which means somewhere there are still budget allocations and management structures to deal with this.

And by this, I mean us. For a quick example, there are still the 'shadows of interference' in two of Uk ufologys best known cases.

I'll leave you with this.

The biggest flaw in ufology is not that they didn't expose the obvious fakes, or the poor research. It's the fact that there is festering and easy to
follow line of subversion and corruption running through ufology that virtually none of the big personalities have dared tackle.

Bill Moore identified 4 other ufologists working with the authorities as he did. Yet no one has ever tried to identify them. I'm fairly sure I know
who they are now, who they tried to recruit in the UK and what counter factual narratives were injected using these transatlantic links.

Why I have no idea!

Fun fact. Bill Moore and Jamie Shandera received the MJ12 film. They didn't team up with Stanton Friedman, he introduced them. Jamie seemed to vanish
after Moore's revelations - and there is virtually no record of his career before or after on the web.

How did Stanton discover Jessie Marcel wished to talk - the basis of Incident At Roswell? A TV producer friend let him know about Marcel.

If Moore and Shandera had the MJ12 papers years before Tim Good, and his article forced them to release their copies, then they must have had
different sources?

So why are there no variations of the papers without Moore's trademark retypimg 'errors' on dates?

I'll leave you to make up your own minds. I couldn't possibly comment.

As a Millenial why did the UFO crazed died down? I gotta admit I feel like I'm born in the wrong decade. You guys have the more interesting
stuff.

Let's safely say that you didn't miss much! In the 1960s I was going almost every week to UFO lectures here in NYC. They were well attended and the
speakers were not as weird sounding with their theories and it was always fun. At one lecture the speaker ended his talk by saying "And that's how
they fly" and the audience just exploded with joyous handclapping and comments.

In the '70s we even had UFO conventions and more lectures.

In the '80s not much was happening aside from regular lectures by Frank Stranges in L.A. and some news reports and a documentary or two. Lunar
anomalies in books, Roswell came out of the woodwork. And since the digital camcorder was in the future, not many UFO photos or emulsion film movies
on TV. Really light fare.

Then the '90s gave everybody a chance to video UFOs and now we had TV the way it was meant to be, beat the newspapers at showing more than pages could
carry. Since I had acquired a VCR in the '80s I now had to buy more videotapes to record the phenomenon.

Around 2000 things petered out 'cause every TV station was now saturated with the same ol', same ol', and what people were now recording on cellphones
had already been done and it was just boring to see unwatchable night footage of lights and during the day no closeups of UFOs, no visible details and
it became like Roswell, things slacked off.

So here it is almost at the end of 2016 and there has been little progress in UFOlogy with no groundbreaking anything. They're still up there, just
like they always were. And we're still down here still wondering what they are.

So be glad you're here now with fresh memories. You haven't missed much.

originally posted by: imitator
Nice collection..... I think SIGHTINGS was my favorite from the 90's, I used to record every episode, I had a random collection of VHS tapes with all
sorts of UFO stuff too... I think my ex-wife threw those tapes away.

Nowadays I get my 90's flashback with X-Files on Netflix.

It's too bad you lost your UFO video archive. As I view my tapes all they do is infuriate me as I watch and listen yet again to a bunch of jerks,
know-nothings who tried to sound authoritative. Logic was never more violated than it was in UFOlogy, period. And I got the tapes to prove
it!

If it wasn't for the few segments that show how some truth behind some claims as Roswell, Phoenix, the Hills, etc., I'd dump my tapes. But everybody
was so young then!

This content community relies on user-generated content from our member contributors. The opinions of our members are not those of site ownership who maintains strict editorial agnosticism and simply provides a collaborative venue for free expression.